Have you ever wanted to work from home? 

Some people like to keep their home and work life separate. My wife and I have been working out of home for a year, and we love it.
For the record, you can keep work and home life separate in a home-based business. We have a separate room in our house dedicated for our business. This is our home office. That helps separate our home and work life. When we are in our home office, we work. When we are in other rooms in our home, we relax. Instead of commuting to

work, we walk down the stairs into our office.For our larger meetings or presentation, we utilize our living room. A few times, we fit over thirty people in there. There’s no need to spend money to rent out a meeting space.

The best part is that I work with my wife and we share meals together. We have fresh home-cooked meals thanks to our fully stocked kitchen. We have a lot of natural light and roaming space during the day and it is way more comfortable working at a cubicle or desk.

It wasn’t always this way. I used to lease a traditional office.

A lot of people think having an office (or multiple locations) is better. A lot of business owners agree that. It’s not. What that means for a lot of business owners is more overhead, responsibilities and commitments. Even if the locations are profitable, it is another burden to think about.

I had an office for seven years. It was a great business location. It had free parking. It was a ground floor street-front retail space on one of the main streets next to two free way exits. It was in the Liliha district of Honolulu, near downtown. We paid $1500 a month for 750 square feet. $2 a square foot for commercial space in Honolulu is an unbelievable deal. On the flip side, that also meant spending $18,000 a year in overhead, whether you utilize the space or not. That means if you went on vacation for a month, you still pay for it. In those seven years, I spent more time in my office than at home.

When I had a cell phone store, an office was a necessary expense doing business. Without it, I had no business.

I had to be there whether I had customers or not because I never knew exactly when someone was going to walk

through the door. My diet was terrible. I didn’t have a fully stocked kitchen. I either ate out, ate a sand which, or skipped my meals all together. It was not comfortable. I could not work in my pajamas. Like most office spaces, I did not have a lot of natural light, nor did I have a comfortable bed to take a break on when I became tired.

When I was working, I often wished I could have a business where I could make the same amount of money (or more), without having the burden of having a store. I just wanted to simplify my life.

The first step of simplifying my life was closing my cell phone store to focus on my essential oil business. The second step was letting go of my office.

You don’t need an office to be “legit.”

You’d think I’d end my lease once I closed my cell phone store, but I felt that having a brick and mortar office legitimized my business. It took me two more years to realize the truth. Many of the top essential oil business owners don’t have a brick and mortar office.

In our business, we are in charge of the marketing and distribution of oils, while the company we partner with is in charge of production, fulfillment, and delivery of the oils. Our part of the business requires no additional employees, so we don’t have to worry about payroll. Most of the administration work is done by the company we partner with, so there really is no reason to rent out an additional office space.

One of the concerns with working out of home is privacy and safety. When you have a retail store, you are open to the public, anybody can walk into the store. I’ve had a few unpleasant encounters in my cell phone store. With our essential oil business, we can be very selective with the people we invite over. If we wanted to, we can conduct our business without inviting anyone over at all.

I know a few professionals that work out of home. Some are bookkeepers. Others are medical coders and virtual assistants. Owning an essential oil business is very different than other home-based careers. I know of an analyst who works out of home that doesn’t have time to eat because she is too busy

We run our essential oil business our of home and we have time freedom. On our down time, we talk. We exercise. We cook. We eat. We relax. We watch a movie. We read. Most home-based professionals I know don’t have quality time they wished they have with their spouse and family.

If you do it right, working out of home is fun and provides more freedom. Would you prefer working out of home?

Hope you enjoyed this article. Have an amazing week.
-Holan